Dear Readers

I’m going to take a break from this. I don’t have a single cause which I feel very passionate about and which is enough to motivate me to write. I am interested by lots of things, and enjoy writing about them to push my ideas forward, but it seems, somehow, arrogant (in the absence of a cause) to even imagine that anyone might be interested in reading about what I think, unless they were a clone of me.

This is emphatically not a reflection on those blogs that I read, because I enjoy reading them enormously, and commenting on them too. I feel uncomfortable, however, with the pressure of an audience, even though I know some of the audience very well. I do not want to write for the audience – I’ve fought hard to develop a more internal locus of control – but neither can I avoid (over) thinking about the possible audience. Often it feels as if I am just tossing a precious thought into a dark chasm of nothingness: I’d rather chew on it myself. Often I feel the pressure of having to write something to satisfy expectations because the truth is that you are all only here for so long as I write things to read, and I do not like that pressure. Often I feel my writing becomes awkward and clumsy and heavy and, ultimately, inauthentic.

I am also more constrained than I had imagined by the position I occupy in local government – I’m the appointed independent chair of a committee responsible for promoting and maintaining good governance and high ethical standards of behaviour. This constraint has rather surprised me, but the constraint is there all the same.

Flooding this blog with a rapid fire of posts is typical of me and, I know, difficult for everyone else to keep up with. I tend to express my anxiety by overfunctioning. Typical of an older sister. I do not want to hide behind duplicitous anonymity and want to be able to stand up and be counted for everything I write. But I do not want to shout “Look at me”.

I’d rather have a real conversation about things, being honest.

I’m going away to see a friend in Holland next weekend and have given myself until I get back to think about what I want to do with this blog.

These issues are the same ones all of us who blog grapple with. Your thoughts and ideas do matter, otherwise I wouldn’t spend precious time reading what you have to say (and I don’t think we look or think alike). If you think that others are not influenced or at least prodded into thinking about what you say, then I think you are underestimating your audience. Some will stay a few seconds and move on and some will be thinking about something you write for days. That’s how blogging works.

Dialogue on a blog is part of the fun. Unfortunately it does not develop overnight. When it does happen it makes you defend and even question the things you write. That’s a good thing but it also requires a thick skin.

I often give unsolicited advice. My wife, Anna scolds me and says that people don’t want to hear solutions, sometimes just listening to them is enough. I’ll shut up now.

Stavros, thank you for some welcome advice from an experienced blogger. I woke up this morning thinking that if people do not want to read my blog, they don’t have to. And if they do want to, then they can. And if they want to comment, they will, and if they don’t want to comment, then they will lurk. And that people do not comment for lots of different reasons. And I won’t be able to please everybody all of the time, but that’s OK. Sometimes I’ll feel like writing, and other times I won’t have anything to say. And that’s OK too.

I don’t have a thick hide and am not sure I can cultivate one, but there are positive things about having a thin skin too.

Dear Daffodil, thank you for your delicious comment! I’ll carry on writing, though you can look forward to some posts boosting Britain for a while – a combination of some lovely places I’ve visited over the past few days and the West Lothian question – which might not be your cup of tea … I’ve still not finished with my Dutch experience which thrilled me enormously. MX